Greek archaic sculpture

An archaic dedication from Samos known as the Geneleos Group is considered by scholars to be one of the first family dedications in Greek art, or, to be more precise, the first archaeological record showing an elite family in form of life size round sculpture in a sanctuary. Furthermore, it is one of very few archaic sculptures attributable to a certain artist – Geneleos. It is generally assumed that the persons shown are part of a family extending over two generations with the iconography highlighting the different social role models of its members: mother, father, son, and daughters. In this paper, I will try to question this common reading by proposing alternatives, triggered by the ambiguous iconography of the figures and by the placement of the inscriptions related to them.

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The marble fragment Inv. BE 132 of the Archaeological Museum of Thebes comes from Thebes itself. It is a fragment from the lower part of a grave stele together with its left side, preserving part of the left shin of a male figure wearing a long himation (figs 1-3). Comparisons with parallels especially from Athens, where the theme first appeared before spreading to Ionia and the Cyclades, permit a valid reconstruction of the male figure in himation (fig. 7). This is the first known one-figure stele in Boeotia representing a man in a long himation, since on the slightly earlier Thespian stele of Gathon and Aristokrates (fig. 4) the man in a long himation is depicted in the background. The fragment under discussion should be dated to the end of the 6th or the very beginnings of the 5th century BC. Its high quality suggests an Athenian artist.

This paper presents a survey of archaic and early Classical Greek sculpture for the first appearances of the seldom seen goddesses Iris and Leto. The results appear to indicate that the early messenger goddess Iris may have been confused with Nike at locations such as Delos and Delphi. On the other hand, the results provide a bit of confirmation that mother goddess Leto originated in southwestern Anatolia. However, attribution of the earliest Greek sculptures to specific deities remains uncertain.

This is the first publication of a 6th century relief fragment from the rim of a large basin, most likely from Sicily; it exemplifies the technique of applying a cylinder-matrix to a strip of fine clay around the rim of a very large coarse ware vessel.

Ancient site of Assos lies in the Troad, 17 kms south of modern Ayvacık which belongs to Çanakkale today. Different topographical landscape of Akropolis can easily be noticed within the other geomorphological features of the region. Assos Temple was built on the large southern terrace of the summit of the akropolis. The enterance of the 6x13 peripteral temple of which orientation stands on NW-SE is at the East side. Although the archaic temple was built in Doric order, opisthodomos was omitted because of Ionic method which influenced the temple. All of the sculptural and architectural elements of the temple are andesites; but akrotheria, sima spouts and metope which is under the discussion of this study, are of volcanic tuff. Prefences of tuff on entablature and akrotheria clearly depend on soft and light fabric of this kind of stone. Only eleven metopes, two of which were not decorated with sculptural description, remained today. It is very surprisıng that so few metopes survived today although the temple should have 68 metopes, 10 for each short side and 24 for each long sides, in original. The metope, found in 1980, is monolith but left side, right upper corner and plinthos are missed. Only some parts of three figures can be seen but almost none of the details have survived since the metope heavily destroyed because of the soft and weak character of its’ material. The metope was mentioned by Wescoat before. First drawing and restitution, based on this drawing, were made by her. She interpreted the scene depicted on metope as “Recovery of Helen” admitting figures on it as Menelaos and Helene. I propose these three figures depicted on the metope as “Akhilleus, Priamos and Hermes” interpreting the scene as “Ransom of Hektor” instead of Recovery of Helene.